Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

Tuesday, 04 May 2010

Supreme Court Rejects Review of Linda Carty Case

The Supreme Court has refused to review the case of a British woman
sentenced to death for killing a Houston mother and stealing her baby in
2001.

The justices rejected an appeal from Linda Carty, who complained her
trial lawyers were deficient.

And:

It is rare for women
to get the death penalty in the United States and even rarer for them
to be put death. Fifty-four women are on death row and in the modern era
(1973 to 2009) of the death penalty, only 11 women have been executed.

Part of the reason
is that few women commit capital offenses, but Ohio Northern University
law professor Victor Streib, who has studied women and death penalty for
25 years, suggests there's a secondary reason.

The justice system,
Streib said, treats women differently than men.

“Women aren't
sentenced to death at trial as often as you think,” Streib said. “And
once they're sentenced to death, they're more likely to have the
sentence reversed by an appellate court. As a society, we're nervous
about taking women's lives.”

That's even true in
Texas, the nation's death penalty capital, he said. The state has
executed only three women since 1973. The last female execution in the
U.S. was in Texas in 2005. Francis Newton, of Harris County, was put to
death for killing her husband and children in 1987. She sat on death row
for nearly 20 years.

Carty had been seeking a new trial, claiming her trial attorneys, led
by Houston lawyer Jerry Guerinot, did little to defend her. She also
claimed the slaying was connected to her role as a federal drug
informant, which stopped after she led police on a chase that ended with
the discovery of 50 pounds of marijuana and two guns in her car.

According
to a petition filed for Carty by appellate attorneys obtained through
the British government, Guerinot didn't meet with her until two weeks
before her trial, ignored the fact that Carty had been raped and forced
to give up a child and never sought legal help from the British
consulate. It also said Corona was never informed he could invoke
spousal privilege and not offer damning testimony against her.

Britain
also filed a companion brief supporting Carty's Supreme Court appeal,
slamming her trial defense and saying its consulate officials were not
informed properly under terms of international treaties when she was
arrested.

British officials and pro bono lawyers had appealed to the justices to
order a new trial for Linda Carty, citing what they said were gross
errors by her court-appointed lawyer during the 2001 trial, in which
prosecutors said Carty killed her neighbor to steal her newborn son.

Paul Lynch, Britain's consul general in Houston, said Carty would
have been provided a more effective lawyer and British government
support during her trial had Texas authorities informed Carty of her
right to consult with British diplomats.

"We are deeply concerned
by the position Linda Carty is now in, and we will be working extremely
hard to help her over the coming weeks and months," Lynch said after the
justices denied her last appeal.

She was sentenced to death in February 2002. She is one of 10 female
prisoners on a special death row at the Mountain View prison in
Gatesville, Texas.

Carty asserts her innocence, and her appellate
legal team claims her original trial was "catastrophically flawed."
Among the allegations filed in various appeals are that her
court-appointed lawyer was incompetent and failed to meet Carty until
immediately before the trial, failed to spot flaws and inconsistencies
in the prosecution's case, failed to interview witnesses and did not
look at key mitigating evidence.

Reprieve, a British human rights
groups serving as her new legal team, also said she should have been
given access upon arrest to the British consulate.

The British
Foreign Office has filed two amicus briefs in U.S. federal courts in
Carty's case, which complain that Britain was not notified of her
original arrest, said a Foreign Office spokesman who declined to be
named, in line with policy. The Foreign Office remains in close touch
with Carty and her legal representatives, the spokesman said.

"We're
continuing to provide her with consular assistance," he said. "We've
also made the U.S. aware of our stance (against) the death penalty."

Ms Carty has maintained her innocence and
supporters have presented strong evidence to suggest her trial was badly
flawed. British Foreign Office officials are among those who made
representations urging the Supreme Court to review the case.

The British consulate should have been informed of
her arrest "without delay" but only learnt of it after the sentence. The
Foreign Office said last night: "We are deeply concerned by the
position Linda Carty is now in, and we will be working extremely hard to
help her over the coming weeks and months ... we have made our concerns
known throughout the legal process. We have also raised her case a
number of times through the correct political channels."

Ms Carty, a British national born on St Kitts in the
British Virgin Islands, emigrated to the US in 1982 and worked as an
undercover informant for the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Unless a stay
of execution is granted, Ms Carty will be the first British woman to be
executed in 55 years.

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.

The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.